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Turns out that last post was the 500th post. Huh.

So I haven’t posted lately because all I’ve been doing is working on this discipline stuff, and there is only so many ways I can talk about it here before it gets tedious.

Today I turned in a first draft of the second version of the second chapter. The analysis and argument are kind of weak underdeveloped, I think, but I’ve got it going in the right direction. At least, I think all the material works together; unlike in the first version I had earlier this year.

I’ll be getting back to this chapter because, well, it still needs lots of work, and because it got picked up for a small conference in October, so I need to turn it into a paper. But I’ve got some free time as Dr. Advisor reads it. My to-do list includes

1. Sketch out the next chapter

2. Work on my teaching portfolio

3. Read something interesting

4. Apply for jobs

But I’ll probably end up

1. Walking the dog a lot

2. Watching a bunch of shows on DVD.

Speaking of shows… on the advice of a friend, I watched two seasons of Justified. A few things kind of infuriated me, including the fact that one does not ordinarily find that many Doc Martens, Chuck Taylors, and other hipster affectations on, um, our rural white brothers and sisters. The religious style portrayed by one evangelical enthusiast was…annoying. Even worse, they portray Lexington and Harlan County as right next to each other. And all the outdoor scenes are clearly southern California back lots. I’m a sucker for the southern Appalachians scenery, so this did not work. I only mention this to say that I kind of liked the show. That religious guy is actually one of the most intriguing characters I’ve seen on normal television in a while.

Now, I also started watching Hell on Wheels, mainly because my students seemed to take a liking to it, and I want to keep up with popular history-making. I’m only two episodes in, and it just sucks. Not because of the gawd-awful history, but just because it’s so historically lazy it makes the entire thing tedious and uninteresting. I’m going to give it a few more episodes to see if it catches on, but right now I’m thinking that if you want some post war western shambalistic bad history that is nonetheless so good it rises above its historical shortcomings, then you can’t go wrong with Deadwood.